Where the owner--big or little, but the more of them the better--lives on the land, that land and the country at large benefit to a degree that is demonstrated with singular clearness by seeing the converse system as it is practised in Spain to-day. Here no one, owner or tenant--still less the hireling--takes any living interest (to say nothing of pride) in his possession or occupation beyond that very short-sighted "interest" of squeezing the utmost out of it from day to day. Ancient forests are cut down and burnt into charcoal, and rarely a tree replanted or a thought given to the resulting effects on rainfall or climate. As to beauty of landscape--what matter such æsthetic notions when the owner lives a hundred miles away? The collateral fact that, to a great extent, nature's beauty and nature's gifts are analogous and interdependent is ignored. Such simple issues are too insignificant, and too little understood, for frothy rhetoricians to reflect upon: the latter, moreover, like Gallio (and Pontius Pilate) care for none of these things.
A characteristic that differentiates the Spaniard, north or south, from other (more modern) nationalities, is a comparative indifference in money matters. Now a Spaniard requires money for his daily needs as much as the others; yet he never sinks to the level of total absorption in his pursuit of the dollar. Put that down to apathy, if you will--or to pride; at least there is dignity in the attribute. The leading Spanish newspapers quote the various market fluctuations and changes in value from day to day. Sometimes, possibly, the report may read _sin operaciones_, but never will you see conspicuously protruded, as a main item in the morning's news, the headline "Wall Street." There is (or was) dignity in commerce, and there may yet be readers in England who silently wish that such matters were relegated to their proper position--the monetary columns.
[Illustration: TYPES OF SPANISH BIRD-LIFE
A winter songster, abundant but rarely seen, skulking in densest brakes.]
The chief financial flutter that interests is the Government lottery which is held every fortnight, and at which all classes lose their money; but the National Treasury profits to the tune of three millions sterling yearly. Spain is the home of "chance": that element appeals to Spanish character. Thus in bull-fighting (the one popular pastime) the name applied to each of its formulated exploits is _suerte_--chance.